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mbanu wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:26 pm

Chadrinkincat wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:25 pm

mbanu
Any pictures of that you can post of that counterfeit Chen Mingyuan Three Friends pot? I’d be curious to see how it compares to the styling of later factory versions.

Some nice high-resolution photos: http://www.artmuseum.cuhk.edu.hk/en/col ... etail/8783

Interesting.

Just from the way the patina looks I would have very strong doubts, without even having experience with as to how a real one should look like. Proportions also do not seem very "masterful." Anyone has a source of a confirmed real example?

mbanu wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:26 pm

Chadrinkincat wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:25 pm

mbanu
Any pictures of that you can post of that counterfeit Chen Mingyuan Three Friends pot? I’d be curious to see how it compares to the styling of later factory versions.

Some nice high-resolution photos: http://www.artmuseum.cuhk.edu.hk/en/col ... etail/8783

Thanks. Interesting style of a three friends theme pot

https://mmis.hkpl.gov.hk/coverpage/-/co ... t1NSVLH56A

The Hong Kong Public Library put up a nice 14-page pamphlet from the 6th Festival of Asian Arts in 1981, Lectures on Yixing Pottery. Most of it is a summary of popular shapes, with a brief detour to talk about signatures.

https://brill.com/view/journals/vvak/44 ... anguage=en

A slightly different twist, instead of publishing a pamphlet on Yixing, the curator Eva Ströber published an article ahead of the exhibit in Aziatische Kunst, "The Chinese Taste for Tea: Yixing Teapots in the Collection of the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden".

Lots of interesting trivia in this one, like the symbolic meaning of squirrels and the early trend for putting a poem on the bottom of the pot next to the potter's signature rather than on the side of the pot. ("I love the moon, so I postpone my sleep" would probably be, "We slip through the streets, while everyone sleeps" for a British or Australian Yixing fan. )

Another one, The Brown Stonewares of the Yixing Kilns: The Carol Potter Peckham Collection by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Vancouver Museum, 1992. The University of Victoria library is offering online viewing for educational purposes: https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/g ... 47f872d6e5

mbanu wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 23, 2021 9:39 pm

* Yixing Pottery: The World of Chinese Tea Culture by Chunfang Pan, 2004. This is a Long River Press translation. I think they produced a lot of these, as they don't have the markups you see on some other Yixing books. I think this might be a good 101 book for Yixing, as it gives a basic history, outlines different shapes you might see (helpful as online only one or two are really popular, sort of giving the impression that any other shapes can't be real), lists a few famous potters and up-and-coming (probably also famous now) potters, color photos of famous pots, etc.

Found another nice book by the same author, Charm of Dark-Red Pottery Teapots from 1992. Found at a reasonable price I suppose because it is a book about Yixing that does not have the word Yixing in the title. 175 pages, all photographs full-color. It says that it was "supervised by Yixing Ceramics Industrial Corporation", so I'm guessing that the first section of the book, "Modern Pottery Artists Surpassing the Old" is made up of pots submitted by active potters at the time. The second part of the book is a little iffy to me, "Dark-Red Pottery Teapots from Ancient Times -- A Rare of Rarities", as it does not list provenance for where these old pot photos are from, other than thanking Han Qilou in the introduction for help gathering the photos.

I think that these were imported for sale at museums in the U.S., as the former owner of my copy was kind enough to slip the original purchase receipt into the sleeve.

A bit light on info, but the photos are much nicer than in the 2004 book. Also a few intriguing things -- some of the pots have something called a "buffalo's nostril lid" which I had never heard of before. It looks like wyardley on TeaChat had a pot with a lid like this, he called it a "cow nose".

Another one, Yixing Stoneware, Hidden Fragrance of Purple Jade a 2008 catalog for a joint exhibition between the Nanjing Museum and the Mai Foundation in Taiwan.

An American bookseller ended up with a few copies of this one for a good price, so I picked one up. This is probably the first time I've been annoyed at an "English-language" Yixing book, as it is clear that not everything is translated. The captions are translated, but often there will be untranslated commentary underneath. However, they include an essay by Eva Ströber on Yixing export ware that I enjoyed, and the Nanjing Museum pots list provenance when they have it (such as who donated it, or which archaeology dig it was discovered in). Some of the seal photographs are not so good, being basically brown squares, although visibility improves if looking at the book under natural light.

There are a few pots where I wish they would have given more information about their reasoning, such as a pot signed Wang Yinchun from the Nanjing Museum that was dated as being from the 1970s. Between the Cultural Revolution and the potter dying in 1976, I wondered if there was a particular story behind this pot, and how they reached their assessment of the date.

Not all 308 pages are about teapots, they also cover pot shards, a few calligraphy tools (brush pots, water droppers, etc.) and some kettles. Most of it is about teapots, though.

Maybe interesting for others, what British knowledge of Yixing looked like in 1904, courtesy of Frank Brinkley's China, its History, Arts, and Literature.

(No info on the pot, sadly.)

*Edit: But, a larger photo of the lid.

mbanu wrote: ↑

Wed May 12, 2021 3:48 pm

Maybe interesting for others, what British knowledge of Yixing looked like in 1904, courtesy of Frank Brinkley's China, its History, Arts, and Literature.

Plus, the paintings referenced by Brinkley, from Stephen Bushell's translation, Chinese Porcelain. Learning to understand Yixing through illustrations is adding an extra level of difficulty -- really makes one appreciate the high-res photographic world of today.

Bok wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 11:02 pm

mbanu wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 10:26 pm

Chadrinkincat wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 18, 2021 9:25 pm

mbanu
Any pictures of that you can post of that counterfeit Chen Mingyuan Three Friends pot? I’d be curious to see how it compares to the styling of later factory versions.

Some nice high-resolution photos: http://www.artmuseum.cuhk.edu.hk/en/col ... etail/8783

Interesting.

Just from the way the patina looks I would have very strong doubts, without even having experience with as to how a real one should look like. Proportions also do not seem very "masterful." Anyone has a source of a confirmed real example?

Was re-reading Eva Ströber, and I think she may imply that a real example is unlikely? During the time Chen Mingyuan was active, figural Yixing teapots were mainly viewed as exportware. (Not sure how Gong Chun type pots fit into this, so maybe I'm misunderstanding.) I suppose Chen Mingyuan could have made exportware, but he was not well-known in Europe. The popular option within China was still mostly those pear-shaped teapots, I think, with maybe a line from a poem carved on the bottom. Supposedly it wasn't until the 19th century that domestic interest developed in figural Yixing.

To my surprise, the University of Chicago Press has some sort of distribution arrangement with the Hong Kong University Press -- seeing an unexpected Yixing book led to another impulsive purchase, although I think this will have to be the last one -- I really don't have an interest in Yixing collecting, so it seems silly to develop an interest in Yixing book collecting.

This book is I-Hsing Teapot: Painting by 10 Shanghai Masters: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo ... 38996.html

I think that they were a bit confused about what they had, as it lists the author as the Hong Kong academic Jao Tsung-I, but the author is actually Thomas Wai Hung Tang. It was published by HKU under their Jao Tsung-I Petit Ecole series, however, which I think was the source of the confusion. It is a 2004 album of engraved (not painted) pots that belonged to the collector Shen Zhi-yi.

The exact time when the pots were engraved isn't quite clear from the English translation, but it is strongly implied that it started shortly after Yixing pots were being signed by individual artists in the late 70s. One of the artists whose pot engravings are featured, Zhang Da-zhuang, died in 1980, for instance. An end date is also not so clear, although it mentions that the person responsible for the rubbings in the book died in 1990.

Each artist gets a brief biography, and as mentioned above the pot photos include rubbings, as the engraving itself is not always easy to see. A bit annoyingly, very little is said about Shen Zhi-yi, even though these were his teapots, other than that he was born in 1921, was somehow connected to the Shanghai Art Gallery, and that the original idea of holding an exhibition of engraved Yixing teapots (the reason for the first group to be created) came from his friend Tang Yun, a painter and Yixing teapot collector himself.

The actual production process is not so clearly outlined. For instance, it includes a brief biography of Shen Jue-chu, but no teapots, saying "The teapots in this album are all carved by Mr. Shen." This suggests that the process was that Shen Zhi-yi went to the artists to get original drawings, which were then sent to Shen Jue-chu the engraver along with the pots, and then returned to Shen Zhi-yi, who went down to Yixing to get the pots fired.

Still, it is in English, and addresses an aspect of Yixing that does not seem to be focused on very much in other English-language books.

mbanu wrote: ↑

Mon May 24, 2021 10:01 pm

A bit annoyingly, very little is said about Shen Zhi-yi, even though these were his teapots, other than that he was born in 1921, was somehow connected to the Shanghai Art Gallery, and that the original idea of holding an exhibition of engraved Yixing teapots (the reason for the first group to be created) came from his friend Tang Yun, a painter and Yixing teapot collector himself.

If Google Translate is treating me right, apparently Shen Zhi-yi (沈智毅) met Tang Yun as a teenager after a rich customer at the painted fan shop he worked at mentioned wanting to buy one of Tang Yun's paintings, having heard that he had moved to Shanghai recently. Shen Zhi-yi told the customer he could make it happen, even though he had never met Tang Yun before. Then he went over to Tang Yun's house and tried to work it out. Tang Yun appreciated the teen's cheek, and they became friends. Through that and his job at the fan shop, he got to know other Shanghai artists and eventually became involved with the Shanghai Artists Association (上海美术家协会), which got him a job at the Shanghai Art Exhibition Hall that they operated and that later transformed into the Shanghai Art Museum.